APORIE OF A SHIP CAPITAINESS: STAR TREK AND FEMINISM
Keywords:
science fiction, Star Trek, feminism, gender, identity, hybridityAbstract
This text explores feminist reception of science fiction, particularly the television series Start Trek. The authors point out differences in feminist interpretations of female characters and gender identities as well as changes that took place in that respect in various installments of the series. It is argued that the first two installments – The Original Series (1966-1969) and The Next Generation (1987- 1994) – recreated the patriarchal gender ideology which was marked by unequal power distribution and male privilege, despite some obvious attempts to ”modernize” female characters and identities. More substantial changes in terms of representing female identities began with the third installment – The Deep Sky Nine (1993-1999). These changes became particularly and, at last, prominent in the fourth installment – The Voyager (1995-2001) – when the main character, the captain, finally became captainess Janeway. Some authors consider this to be a historical event for both women and the television. Feminist theory, however, variously interprets the meaning of this historical event. For fierce hard-line critics, the ”most emancipated” woman of the Star Trek universe, captainess Janeway, is either too feminine to be a feminist, or too much masculine – a stereotype actually of a masculinized female leader. There are, however, other more subtle interpretations, embraced in this text, which treat Janeway as a hybrid. Her masculine and feminine features are intentionally put in conflict, side by side, in order to avoid any ”gendered stigmatization”. The vessel that she commands thus represents a ”feminist heterotopia” where incompatible things, people and situations can be placed next to each other.
Downloads
References
Allen, Robert (1985): Speaking of Soap Operas. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Bacon-Smith, Camille (1992): Enterprising Women. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Barr, Marleen S. (1992): Feminist Fabulation: Space/Postmodern Fiction. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press
Barr, Marleen S. (1993): Lost in Space: Probing Feminist Science Fiction and Beyond. Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Barr, Marleen S. (2000a): „Post-Phallic Culture: Reality Now Resembles Utopian Feminist Science Fiction”, u Marleen S. Barr (ur.). Future Females, The Next Generation: New Voices and Velocities in Feminist Science Fiction Criticism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, str. 67-84.
Barr, Marleen S. (ur.) (2000): Future Females, The Next Generation: New Voices and Velocities in Feminist Science Fiction Criticism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Barr, Marleen S. (ur.) (2001): Future Females: A Critical Anthology. Bowling Green, Ohio:
Bowling Green State University Popular Press.
Ben-Tov, Sharona (1995): The Artificial Paradise: Science Fiction and American Reality. Ann Arbor, MI: Universtity of Michigan Press.
Bick, Ilsa J. (1996): „Boys in Space: ‘Star Trek’, Latency, and the Neverending Story”, Cinema Journal, 35 (2): 43-60.
Bjorklund, Edi(1986): „Women and Star Trek Fandom: From SF to Sisterhood”, Minerva: Quarterly Report on Women and the Military, 4 (1): 16–65.
Blair, Karin (1983): „Sex and Star Trek”, Science-Fiction Studies, 10 (3): 292–297.
Bowring, Michele A. (2004): „Resistance Is Not Futile: Liberating Captain Janeway from the
Masculine-Feminine Dualism of Leadership”, Gender, Work and Organization, 11 (4): 381–405.
Brunsdon, Charlotte (1983): „Crossroads: Notes on Soap Opera”, u: Ann Kaplan (ur.). Regarding Television: Critical Approaches - An Anthology. Frederick, Md.: University Publications of America, str. 76–83 .
Byers, Thomas (1990): „Commodity Futures”, u: Annette Kuhn (ur.). Alien Zone: Cultural Theory and Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema. London: Verso, str. 3–50 .
Cranny-Francis, Anne (1985): „Sexuality and Sex Role Stereotyping in Star Trek”, Science-Fiction Studies, 12 (3): 274–284.
De Gaia, Susan (1998): „Intergalactic Heroines: Land, Body, Soul in Star Trek: Voyager”, International Studies in Philosophy, 30 (1): 18–32.
Dove-Viebahn, Aviva (2007): „Embodyng Hibridity, (En)gendering Community: Captain Janeway And The Enactment Of A Feminist Heterotopia On Stat Trek: Voyager”, Women’s Studies, 36: 597–618.
Haffner, Evan (1996): „Enjoyment (in) between Fathers: General Chang as Homoerotic Enjoyment in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country”, u: Taylor Harrison, Sarah Projansky, Kent A. Ono, Elyce R. Helford (ur.). Enterprise Zones: Critical Positions on Star Trek. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, str. 211–230.
Ferguson, Kathy E. (2002): „This Species Which Is Not One: Identity Practices in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”, Strategies 15 (2): 181–195 .
Foucault, Michel (1986): „Of Other Spaces”, Diacritics, 16 (1): 22–27.
Geraghty, Lincoln (2000): „’Carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives’: Reality and Star Trek’s Multiple Histories”, European Journal of American Culture, 21 (3): 160– 176.
Gregory, Chris (2000): Star Trek Parallel Narratives. London: Macmillan Press.
Hastie, Amelie (1996): „A Fabricated Space: Assimilating the Individual on Star Trek: The Next Generation”, u: Taylor Harrison, Sarah Projansky, Kent A. Ono, Elyce R. Helford (ur.), Enterprise Zones: Critical Positions on Star Trek. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, str. 115–136.
Helford, Elyce Rae (1996): „’A Part of Myself No Man Should Ever See’: Reading Captain Kirk’s Multiple Masculinities”, u: Taylor Harrison, Sarah Projansky, Kent A. Ono, Elyce R. Helford (ur.), Enterprise Zones: Critical Positions on Star Trek. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, str. 10–32.
Heller, Lee E. (1997): „The persistence of difference: Postfeminism, popular discourse, and heterosexuality in Star Trek”, Science Fiction Studies, 24 (2): 226-244.
Henderson, Mary (1994): „Professional Women in Star Trek, 1964–1969”, Film and History, 24 (1/2): 47–59.
Horrocks, Luanda (1997): „’Woman, all woman’: Star Trek, ethics, and the danger of female desire”, Social Alternatives, 16 (1): 23–24 .
Jenkins, Henry (1988): „Star Trek Rerun, Reread, Rewritten: Fan Writing as Textual Poaching”, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 5 (2): 85–107 .
Jenkins, Henry (1992): Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. New York: Routledge.
Johnson-Smith, Jan (2004): American Science Fiction TV: Star Trek, Stargate and Beyond. London: I.B. Tauris.
Joyrich, Lynne (1989-1990): „Television and Cyborg Subject(ed)”, Working Papers from the Center for Twentieth Century Studies 8.
Joyrich, Lynne (1996): „Feminist Enterprise? Star Trek: The Next Generation and the Occupation of Femininity”, Cinema Journal, 35 (2): 61–84.
Korzeniowska, Victoria B. (1996): „Engaging with gender: Star Trek's `Next Generation”, Journal of Gender Studies 5 (1): 19–25.
Kottak, Conrad Phillip (1990): Prime-Time Society: An Anthropological Analysis of Television and Culture. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth.
Kuhn, Annette (ur.) (1990): Alien Zone: Cultural Theory and Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema. London: Verso.
Lamb, Patricia Frazer and Diana L. Veith (1986): „Romantic Myth, Transcendence, and Star Trek Zines”, u: Donald Palumbo (ur.). Erotic Universe: Sexuality and Fantastic Literature, New York: Greenwood, str. 235–255.
Modleski, Tania (1982): Loving with a Vengeance: Mass-Produced Fantasies for Women. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books.
Modleski, Tania (1991): Feminism Without Women: Culture and Criticism in a „Postfeminis”Age, New York: Routledge.
Nochimson, Martha (1992): No End to Her: Soap Opera and the Female Subject. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Penley, Constance (1991): „Brownian Motion: Women, Tactics, and Technology”, u Constance Penley and Andrew Ross (ur.), Technoculture, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, str. 135–161 .
Penley, Constance (1992): „Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Study of Popular Culture”, u Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula Treichler (ur.). Cultural Studies, New York: Routledge, str. 479–500 .
Penley, Constance (1997): NASA/Trek. New York: Verso.
Penley, Constance, Elizabeth Lyon, Lynn Spigel, and Janet Bergstrom (ur.). (1991): Close Encounters: Film, Feminism, and Science Fiction. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press,
Press, Andrea (1991): Women Watching Television: Gender, Class, and Generation in the American Television Experience. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Probyn, Elspeth (1990): „New Traditionalism and Post-Feminism: TV Does the Home”, Screen, 31 (2): 147–159.
Projansky, Sarah (1996): „When the Body Speaks: Deanna Troi’s Tenuous Authority and the Rationalization of Federation Superiority in Star Trek: The Next Generation Rape Narratives”, u: Taylor Harrison, Sarah Projansky, Kent A. Ono, Elyce R. Helford (ur.). Enterprise Zones: Critical Positions on Star Trek. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, str. 33–52.
Roberts, Gareth (1998): „The Philosophy of Balance”, u: Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn (ur.). The Parliament of Dreams: Conferring on Babylon 5. Liverpool: SF Fonudation, str. 46–60 .
Roberts, Robin (1999): Sexual Generations: „Star Trek: The Next Generation” and Gender. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Sargent, Pamela (ur.), (1995): Women of Wonder: The Classic Years, Science Fiction by Women from the 1940s to the 1970s. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1995.
Sargent, Pamela (ur.), (1995a): Women of Wonder: The Contemporary Years, Science Fiction by Women from the 1970s to the 1990s. New York: Harcourt Brace.
Seiter, Ellen et al. (1989): „’Don't Treat Us Like We're So Stupid and Naive’: Toward an Ethnography of Soap Opera Viewers”, u Ellen Seiter et al. (ur.). Remote Control: Television, Audiences, and Cultural Power. New York: Routledge, str. 223–247 .
Stone, Allucquere Rosanne (1995): The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Tetreault, Mary Ann (1984): „The Trouble with Star Trek”, Minerva: Quarterly Report on Women and the Military 2 (4): 119–129.
Trimble, Bjo (1983): On the Good Ship Enterprise. Norfolk, VA: Donning.
Westfahl, Gery (1996): „Where No Market Has Gone Before: ’The ScienceFiction Industry’ and the Star Trek Industry”, Extrapolation, 37 (4): 291–301 .
Whitfield, Stephen PE and Gene Roddenberry (1968): The Making of Star Trek. New York: Ballantine Books.
Wilcox, Clyde (1992): „To Boldly Return Where Others Have Gone Before: Cultural Change and the Old and New Star Treks”, Extrapolation, 33 (1): 88- 100
Woods, Louis A. and Gary L Harmon (1994): „Jung and Star Trek: The Coincidentia Oppositorium and Images of the shadow”; The Journal of Popular Culture, 28 (2): 169– 184.
